What counts as a serious incident, and does charity size matter?

England and Wales: This page sets out the position in full. Scotland: not applicable — Scotland does not run an equivalent reporting regime; its own notifiable events process was abolished in 2024 — see below. Northern Ireland: the same name, and CCNI says trustees must report serious incidents to it. How to make the report is covered at the next step.

What is a serious incident?

In England and Wales, a serious incident is an adverse event, actual or alleged. It results in or risks significant harm to a charity’s people, money, property, work or reputation. This page can be read the moment something has happened. It assumes only that the charity knows who decides for it, set when you set up your decision and delegation framework.

The trustees judge whether an event qualifies against the Charity Commission’s own definition. Verbatim, it is an adverse event, whether actual or alleged, which results in or risks significant:

• harm to your charity’s beneficiaries, staff, volunteers or others who come into contact with your charity through its work;
• loss of your charity’s money or assets;
• damage to your charity’s property; or
• harm to your charity’s work or reputation.

“Significant” means significant in the context of your charity, taking account of its staff, operations, finances and reputation.

The figure most guidance quotes is £25,000 or more, OR less than £25,000 but in excess of 20% of the charity's income. The Commission gives it as a guide for significant financial loss from causes such as fire, flood or losing a court case. For fraud, theft and cyber-crime it says: “There is no minimum loss figure that should be reported”. Read on its own, the guide figure looks like a floor below which nothing needs reporting. It is not: below it, the guidance asks the trustees to decide whether the loss is significant, taking the charity’s income, work and other factors into account.

The second limb, the percentage of income, is the one that catches small charities. It is also the one people drop when they repeat the figure from memory.

Take Tollgate Youth CIO, whose income sits in the small band. It can lose far less than the headline figure in a single incident and still clear the percentage-of-income limb comfortably. A large charity can lose several times that figure and stay comfortably under that limb. The rule scales with the charity, not with the pound.

Unverified or suspicious donations have a separate guide figure, with no percentage limb: totalling £25,000 or more.

Do repeated small losses count?

Yes. The Commission’s own words: “if there have been repeated incidents of low value fraud, theft or cyber-crime in your charity, the Commission would expect you to report this.” Each incident on its own might sit well under any threshold. Read together, they are not the same question.

The controls that catch a pattern early are covered where you set up your financial controls.

Minuting a decision not to report

A decision not to report a borderline incident should be minuted. Not every borderline case gets reported, and the Commission does not expect that it should. Its guidance says a decision made by someone other than the full board “should be reported back to trustees (particularly where incidents were ‘borderline’ and making a report was considered but it was decided not to make one)”. It also says that if the Commission later becomes involved, “you will need to be able to explain why you decided not to report it at the time”.

That is why the minute matters. A minute of a decision not to report is the record of how that decision was made.

A charity that considered an incident and decided against reporting has a record showing trustees turned their minds to the question. A charity that never considered it has nothing. From the outside, the two can look identical until something goes wrong.

A minute of the decision records:

• the decision made
• the full reasons for it
• the information it was based on

It does not need to be long, but it needs those three things.

What is not a serious incident?

Not every adverse event qualifies. Treating everything as reportable is its own kind of mistake, because it buries the incidents that need attention.

The guidance names several categories that fall outside the definition unless something else makes them serious:

• falls in investment values, impairments, write-downs, pension deficits and bad debts, unless they pose a significant threat to the charity’s solvency
• the costs of routine litigation undertaken in line with the charity’s aims
• routine regulatory inspections, unless they produce significant adverse findings
• safeguarding incidents that happen wholly outside the charity, unless it is found or alleged that the charity did not handle them appropriately and harm resulted

Scotland: no equivalent regime since 2024

Scotland has had no equivalent reporting process since OSCR abolished notifiable events on 1 April 2024. It is the sharpest divergence in this hub. Take care not to read it backwards. OSCR’s words, verbatim: “we will no longer ask charities to use our Notifiable Events process to inform us when something serious has happened or is happening to the charity.”

OSCR’s stated reason was that the scheme was not always achieving its aims. It mainly drew reports from large, high-income or cross-border charities.

The position that replaced it, verbatim: “If an issue has been dealt with effectively and the problem has been resolved, there’s no need to notify OSCR. If, however, it is not possible to address any serious issues, or if these issues have not been dealt with in a satisfactory way, charities and trustees should report this to us through our raise a concern form.”

In practice, a Scottish charity that handles a serious problem well is now expected to report nothing. That is the opposite of the England and Wales position, where the incident is reportable whether or not it was handled well. Neither the old nor the current OSCR process was ever a statutory duty. Both are OSCR practice grounded in general trustee duties, not a reporting obligation written into the 2005 Act.

The original notifiable events guidance has been withdrawn. It could not be recovered from any source available for this project. This guide does not describe it. Treat anything claiming to reconstruct it with caution.

If the incident is reportable in England and Wales, the next step is to make a serious incident report.

Common mistake: applying the guide figure as an absolute floor

The percentage-of-income limb bites far lower for a small charity than the headline figure suggests. It is also the limb people drop when they repeat the number from memory.

Common mistake: ignoring a pattern of small losses

Incidents that are trivial on their own can still meet the Commission’s own expectation for reporting when they recur. The section on repeated small losses quotes the Commission’s words.

Common mistake: telling a Scottish charity to file a notifiable event report

The process was abolished on 1 April 2024. Directing a Scottish charity there sends it to a withdrawn page, not a live one.

Worked example

Tollgate Youth CIO’s income sits in the small band. Storm damage to its equipment costs it a sum well under the headline pounds figure in the Commission’s guide. Measured against Tollgate’s own income, not the figure on its own, the loss clears the percentage limb comfortably. The same loss at a large, well-funded charity would most likely not. Had the same sum been stolen, the guide figure would not apply at all: for fraud and theft the Commission sets no minimum and asks the trustees to judge seriousness in the context of the charity.